Technology | Media | Telecommunications

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Milestone: Americans Viewed 10B Video Ads in May

comScore released data showing that more than 180 million U.S. Internet users watched 36.6 billion online content videos in May 2012. Moreover, online video advertising results posted another month of record-breaking gains, surpassing the 10-billion mark for the first time on record.

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in May with 151.7 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 57.8 million, VEVO with 48.3 million, Microsoft Sites with 44.4 million and Facebook.com with 44.3 million.

Nearly 36.6 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 17.6 billion, followed by Hulu with 888 million and Yahoo! Sites with 845 million.

The average viewer watched 21.9 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.7 hours) and Hulu (4.2 hours) earning the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

Americans viewed an all-time high of 10 billion online video ads in May. Hulu ranked first with more than 1.6 billion video ads delivered, followed by Google Sites with nearly 1.4 billion, BrightRoll Video Network with 1.1 billion, Adap.tv with 966 million and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform with 897 million.

Time spent watching video ads totaled 4.5 billion minutes, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 725 million minutes. Video ads reached 52 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 64 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 56, while ESPN delivered an average of 29 ads per viewer.

The May 2012 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO (47.6 million viewers) and Warner Music (27.7 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.5 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 16.2 million, FullScreen with 14.1 million and BroadbandTV with 8.1 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (66 minutes per viewer) followed by VEVO (55 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the most videos (618 million), followed by Machinima (388 million).

Other notable findings from comScore May 2012 study include:

84.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

The duration of the average online content video was 6.5 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

Video ads accounted for 21.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.